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Not Your Average Joe

By

Geoffrey Wheatcroft

Updated July 22, 1999 12:01 a.m. ET

N o other U.S. politician of the 20th century entered the national consciousness so dramatically as Joseph McCarthy, and this despite the brevity of his career. An obscure young senator before his speech in February 1950 claiming to know the names of communists working in the State Department, he then dominated the political landscape for less than five years, until his downfall and early death.

But he gave the language a word that is still invoked on all sides: Only the other week, the eccentric High Tory MP Alan Clark...